To Friends & Family Who Voted for This

(Please feel free to adapt this to your own needs. As much as the Dems and the left are debating tactics and keeping each other focused and resisting, I think it’s also important to let people who voted for this travesty to understand the results of their vote. If you do use it, just give me some credit and maybe join me on Patreon.)

6/29/18

To you, my family members who voted for Trump:

I know you don’t love him. I have to hope against hope that you don’t and that you haven’t supported anything he’s done or stood for since the election.

But I have something to explain: we’re scared out here. I’m worried I’m going to lose my right to be married to my wife. I’m worried that some of my students or their parents are going to be deported. I am worried that women’s rights to birth control and abortion are going to be taken away.

I am worried about those children at the border who may not even know who their parents are, much less see them again. I know you think their parents came here illegally. They didn’t. They came here for amnesty. BUT EVEN IF THEY DID, the brutality can’t be something you stand for. Everyone wants a safe border. But not at that expense.

You know it’s hard for me not to notice that all of you are straight and white and most of you are male. And I just want you to think about that for a second: that maybe what was an unpleasant choice for you, that you held your nose to vote for this blowhard, is terrifying for me. I used to have to carry a copy of our marriage certificate and my wife’s legal name change with me everywhere just in case I had to prove that I was her wife. That I had that shred of heterosexual privilege was something. But I don’t want that again. I don’t want my queer friends who don’t have that to be denied again.

The rates of violence against us are through the roof. You don’t know because you don’t know. Someone dropped a bomb on the porch of a trans house in Philly and you probably didn’t hear about that either.

So here’s what I have to ask you: is this level of hate something you condone, or do you not see the connection between what this president says and does and what his followers are doing all over this country? Do you think brown people deserve this, or queer people, or trans people? I actually want to know.

Because here’s the thing: you may not think so, and you may think that those of us who have done nothing wrong are safe. But we’re not. Bigots tend to be kind of stupid and they think anyone who speaks Spanish, anyone who is black, anyone who is queer, lives up to the worst stereotypes of what they think we are, of what they fear we are.

I wish I could give you all a snapshot of my FB feed: of the college professors who are here on work visas or green cards who are worried about being able to stay; of the accomplished, legally transitioned trans women and men who are worried or seeking out any possible European connections they have “in case it gets too bad”; of the gay men and women who are scared both of the violence and of the loss of rights and are subsequently issuing calls to the community to get their legal documents in place again; of my Jewish friends who are starting to turn assets into cash “just in case”; and the worried parents with differently abled children who are watching the whole school system privatize in ways that leaves their kids out. I wish I could tell all of them not to be scared, not to worry, that it’s not going to be that bad, but I can’t. Because I’m scared to.

And here’s the thing: I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying to fight. I have to. But if I have to send my trans wife out of the country because I’m worried about her, I will.

I’m not writing to you today to blame you. Most of you, to be honest, are in New York and you didn’t actually do this. But I do need you to do something: I NEED YOU TO STAND UP TO YOUR FUCKING PARTY. Either just stay home this election day or don’t vote for Republicans. & I’m asking you to do that just to curb the people out there who think that the policies and rulings and legislation being promoted by this president are an excuse to cause violence to the rest of us.

That’s all.

Please just remember that the next time you vote, someone you love may have everything in the world at risk while you risk nothing. Vote for my rights, and my safety, and my well being, and not for some ideological “choice” between the lesser of two evils.

You need to denounce the homophobia, the white supremacy, the transphobia, the fear and hatred of immigrants, OUT LOUD, ON SOCIAL MEDIA, AND TO YOUR FELLOW REPUBLICANS. I honestly believe you all are not part of this bullshit, but I don’t hear you saying it and the haters are out in force. We need you so much to help us live.

I don’t scare easy, and I’m scared. And I’m scared of the unchecked power of an evangelical Republican party who thinks America is only for people like you and not for people like me.